13 found
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  1. Progress as Approximation to the Truth: A Defence of the Verisimilitudinarian Approach.Gustavo Cevolani & Luca Tambolo - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (4):921-935.
    In this paper we provide a compact presentation of the verisimilitudinarian approach to scientific progress (VS, for short) and defend it against the sustained attack recently mounted by Alexander Bird (2007). Advocated by such authors as Ilkka Niiniluoto and Theo Kuipers, VS is the view that progress can be explained in terms of the increasing verisimilitude (or, equivalently, truthlikeness, or approximation to the truth) of scientific theories. According to Bird, VS overlooks the central issue of the appropriate grounding of scientific (...)
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  2. A Tale of Three Theories: Feyerabend and Popper on Progress and the Aim of Science.Luca Tambolo - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 51:33-41.
    In this paper, three theories of progress and the aim of science are discussed: the theory of progress as increasing explanatory power, advocated by Popper in The logic of scientific discovery ; the theory of progress as approximation to the truth, introduced by Popper in Conjectures and refutations ; the theory of progress as a steady increase of competing alternatives, which Feyerabend put forward in the essay “Reply to criticism. Comments on Smart, Sellars and Putnam” and defended as late as (...)
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  3.  65
    Pliability and resistance: Feyerabendian insights into sophisticated realism.Luca Tambolo - 2014 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4 (2):197-213.
    In this paper we focus on two claims, put forward by Feyerabend in his later writings , which constitute the metaphysical core of his view of scientific inquiry. The first, that we call the pliability thesis, is the claim that the world can be described by indefinitely many conceptual systems, none of them enjoying a privileged status. The second, that we call the resistance thesis, is the claim that the pliability of the world is limited, i.e., not all the different (...)
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  4.  39
    Multiple discoveries, inevitability, and scientific realism.Luca Tambolo & Gustavo Cevolani - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 90 (December 2021):30-38.
    When two or more (groups of) researchers independently investigating the same domain arrive at the same result, a multiple discovery occurs. The pervasiveness of multiple discoveries in science suggests the intuition that they are in some sense inevitable—that one should view them as results that force themselves upon us, so to speak. We argue that, despite the intuitive force of such an “inevitabilist insight,” one should reject it. More specifically, we distinguish two facets of the insight and argue that: (a) (...)
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  5. So close no matter how far: counterfactuals in history of science and the inevitability/contingency controversy.Luca Tambolo - 2020 - Synthese 197 (5):2111-2141.
    This paper has a twofold purpose. First, it aims at highlighting one difference in how counterfactuals work in general history, on the one hand, and in history of the natural sciences, on the other hand. As we show, both in general history and in history of science good counterfactual narratives need to be plausible, where plausibility is construed as appropriate continuity of both the antecedent and the consequent of the counterfactual with what we know about the world. However, in general (...)
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  6.  35
    An unappreciated merit of counterfactual histories of science.Luca Tambolo - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 81:101183.
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  7.  37
    The Problem of Rule-Choice Redux.Luca Tambolo - 2018 - Journal of the Philosophy of History 12 (2):284-302.
    _ Source: _Page Count 19 In this paper, we tackle the contribution that history of science can make to the _problem of rule-choice_, i.e., the choice from among competing methodological rules. Taking our cue from Larry Laudan’s writings, we extensively discuss what we call _historicist naturalism_, i.e., the view that history of science plays a pivotal role in the justification of rules, since it is one source of the evidence required to settle methodological controversies. As we illustrate, there are cases (...)
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  8.  90
    Why Adding Truths Is Not Enough: A Reply to Mizrahi on Progress as Approximation to the Truth.Gustavo Cevolani & Luca Tambolo - 2019 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 32 (2):129-135.
    In a recent paper in this journal, entitled ‘Scientific Progress: Why Getting Closer to Truth is Not Enough’ (2017), Moti Mizrahi argues that the view of progress as approximation to the truth or increasing verisimilitude is plainly false. The key premise of his argument is that on such a view of progress, in order to get closer to the truth one only needs to arbitrarily add a true disjunct to a hypothesis or theory. Since quite clearly scientific progress is not (...)
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  9. Truth may not explain predictive success, but truthlikeness does.Gustavo Cevolani & Luca Tambolo - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (4):590-593.
    In a recent paper entitled “Truth does not explain predictive success” , Carsten Held argues that the so-called “No-Miracles Argument” for scientific realism is easily refuted when the consequences of the underdetermination of theories by the evidence are taken into account. We contend that the No-Miracles Argument, when it is deployed within the context of sophisticated versions of realism, based on the notion of truthlikeness , survives Held’s criticism unscathed.
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  10.  44
    (1 other version)Realism, antirealism, and theoretical conservatism.Luca Tambolo & Gustavo Cevolani - 2023 - Synthese 201 (1):1-18.
    This paper contributes to the debate on the question of whether a systematic connection obtains between one’s commitment to realism or antirealism and one’s attitude towards the possibility of radical theoretical novelty, namely, theory change affecting our best, most successful theories (see, e.g., Stanford in Synthese 196:3915–3932, 2019; Dellsén in Stud Hist Philos Sci 76:30–38, 2019). We argue that it is not allegiance to realism or antirealism as such that primarily dictates one’s response to the possibility of radical theoretical novelty: (...)
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  11.  11
    Frankenstein and Philosophy: The Shocking Truth.Michael Hauskeller, Danilo Chaib, Greg Littmann, Dale Jacquette, Elena Casetta & Luca Tambolo - 2013 - Open Court.
    Ever since it was first unleashed in 1818 the story of Victor Frankenstein and his reanimated, stitched-together corpse has inspired intense debate. Can organic life be reanimated using electricity or genetic manipulation? If so, could Frankenstein’s monster really teach itself to read and speak as Mary Shelley imagined? Do monsters have rights, or responsibilities to those who would as soon kill them? What is it about music that so affects Frankenstein’s monster, or any of us? What does Mel Brook’s Frau (...)
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  12. (1 other version)Counterfactual Histories of Science and the Contingency Thesis.Luca Tambolo - 2006 - In Lorenzo Magnani & Claudia Casadio (eds.), Model Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. Logical, Epistemological, and Cognitive Issues. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
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  13.  32
    Il "pluralismo libertario" di Feyerabend.Luca Tambolo - 2007 - Rivista di Filosofia 98 (3):385-416.
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